basketball player
Personal Information
Full name, Grant Henry Hill; born October 5, 1972, in Dallas, TX; son of Calvin (a retired professional football player) and Janet (an attorney and consultant) Hill; married Tamia (a jazz singer), 1999.
Education: Duke University, B.A., 1994.
Career
Member of Duke University Blue Devils basketball team, 1990-94, making appearances in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) finals in 1991, 1992, and 1994. Professional basketball player, 1994--. Selected by Detroit Pistons third overall in first round of 1994 National Basketball Association draft.
Life's Work
According to the old saying, "nice guys finish last," but Grant Hill has made a career of proving that wrong. Widely admired by fans for his leadership ability and his winning personality, Hill has been described as a "hope for sports heroism" in a day when many professional basketball players seem moody, arrogant, and obsessed with fame and fortune. "In a world of flashy young stars, Hill is an oddity...," wrote Mike Lupica in Esquire. "He conducts himself with an elegance that seems more uncommon in sports than a solid collective-bargaining agreement."
If the balloting for the annual National Basketball Association (NBA) All-Star Game is any indication, Hill was the most popular player in basketball in both 1995 and 1996 when he received the most All-Star votes of any active player, even beating--in 1996--Michael Jordan. Product endorsements, television appearances, and an action shot on the front of the Frosted Mini-Wheats cereal box have brought the Duke University graduate a level of recognition far beyond what a typical NBA player might expect in the early stages of his career. Former Pistons coach Don Chaney told Time magazine: "Grant is headed for stardom. You can't talk it, and you can't teach it. The fans are getting hungry--hungry--and are getting tired of immature athletes. They want something better."
It is not surprising that expectations for Hill were high--and that he has struggled to live up to them. When the Detroit Pistons signed him as a rookie in 1994 he was hailed as the "next Jordan" based on his stellar performance in college. The comparison did not suit Hill, who in his polite way tried to explain that he plays a different style of basketball. Being hailed as an heir to Jordan "didn't seem fair to me," the younger player explained in Sports Illustrated. "No matter what I did, if I didn't score as many points as Michael, or win a title in as many years as him, I would be a failure. Besides, I was never a scorer. Getting 30 [points] a night has never been what I'm about." What Hill is about is being a great all-around player, grabbing rebounds and defending against league-leading scorers while serving as a team leader and a spokesman for honest, sportsmanlike play. "Off the court, I can be the nicest person in the world," Hill explained in USA Today Weekend. "But when I get on the court, whether you're my mother, father, or friend, I want to beat you. I want to beat you bad. I'm not going to cheat. I'm not going to play dirty. I'll do anything within the rules to win."
Grant Hill was born in 1972 to parents who knew all about high-level accomplishment. His father, Calvin Hill, was an All-America football player at Yale who went on to win the Rookie of the Year award in 1969 and appear in four Pro Bowls as a running back for the Dallas Cowboys. Calvin Hill was the Cowboys' first 1,000-yard rusher. He also played for the Washington Redskins and the Cleveland Browns. Not to be outdone, Grant Hill's mother, who roomed with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton at Wellesley College, worked as an attorney and consultant in the nation's capital.
Although Grant cannot remember his father's best years as a football player, he did grow up with a realistic view of sports superstardom. "I never saw [my father] in his prime. But I pretty much know what he did," Hill explained in USA Today. As a youngster Hill listened to sports lore at the knees of some of the greatest football players of his father's generation. His father encouraged him to excel in sports, but--oddly enough--kept him out of pee-wee football. "I know this sounds funny," Hill told Time, "but it was almost like being born into a royal family and being raised like a prince, being taught one day to become king. Not just how to be an athlete, but how to do things right."
While Calvin Hill was playing for the Washington Redskins, the family moved to Reston, Virginia, an affluent suburb of Washington, D.C. An only child, Grant was raised there in a home where rules and regulations were many and privileges few. He never attended a dance or a party until he turned 16, and if his parents were not home he could not leave his neighborhood. All of his homework had to be finished before he could play sports. Hill did not particularly mind the rules, but he was often embarrassed when he was singled out because of his father's accomplishments. Little did he know that by the time he turned 20, the mantle would be passed, and people would be asking Calvin Hill about his famous son.
Because Hill's father would not let him play junior league football, he gravitated to basketball and chose it as his sport. The first battle of his nascent career occurred in ninth grade, when he wanted to play junior varsity with his friends, and the coach wanted him to jump right to the varsity squad. Confronted by his father and the coach, a tearful Hill explained that he did not want to bypass junior varsity because he was afraid his friends would be jealous. "I guess I always wanted to be liked by everybody," he recalled in Sports Illustrated. "Here my father was in sports, my parents had money, and I'm thinking that if I do well in sports, people will ... not like me. I didn't want to seem better than everybody else. Eventually I realized I was better."
After agreeing to play varsity basketball only reluctantly, Hill averaged 11 points per game as a freshman for the South Lakes High School team. During his four years of high school, his team advanced to the state finals twice. As a teenager Hill dreamed of attending nearby Georgetown University to play basketball. He changed his mind after a visit he made to the campus during his junior year of high school. The athlete told Esquire that when he visited Georgetown, "Coach [John] Thompson was there, and Miss Mary Fenlon, Georgetown's academic adviser. We're sitting in a room and Miss Fenlon hands me a book and says, `Read this.' I was a little startled, but I took the book and started reading to myself. Then she says, `I meant, read out loud.' So I started reading out loud. After a page, she stops me and says, `Now, tell me what you've read.'" Deeply--and justifiably--offended, Hill left the room vowing never to attend Georgetown.
Georgetown's loss was Duke University's gain. The school in Durham managed to treat Hill with respect, and he joined the Blue Devils basketball team in the fall of 1990. Playing as a freshman in the shadow of such notables as Bobby Hurley and Christian Laettner, Hill nonetheless made a great contribution to the team. The Blue Devils won the 1991 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) national championship by beating the University of Kansas. The final score in that game was a miraculous slam by Hill, made off an erratic pass by Hurley. The following year Duke returned to the NCAA finals for a rare championship repeat. This time Hill's performance was more noticeable, especially in the east regional final against Kentucky, when his full-court lob to Laettner allowed Duke to win at the buzzer.
Duke's Final Four appearances with Hill were not over. In the spring of 1994 he once again led the Blue Devils into the NCAA championship game--this time without the presence of Hurley or Laettner. Hill had come to be acknowledged as the team leader, under the gentle prodding of Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski. The coach described Hill in Sports Illustrated as "a member of college basketball's elite" who was merely "jumping his place in line." Krzyzewski added: "A kid like Grant needs to be helped to get to his rightful position, to realize that he's really that good.... He'll always be very sensitive toward everyone else in line, even when he's at the head of it." Even though the 1994 Blue Devils lost the NCAA championship to Arkansas, Hill was still named Atlantic Coast Conference Player of the Year.
No one in the Hill family was surprised when Grant Hill was chosen third in the first round of the 1994 NBA draft by the Detroit Pistons. He inked an eight-year, $45-million contract to play ball, and almost immediately reaped significant contracts for commercial endorsements from Fila athletic wear, Sprite, Chevrolet, and other major corporations. His debut in the NBA earned more press coverage than perhaps any other player before him, and--having been raised in a sports spotlight--he accepted all the acclaim with good cheer. Describing his arrival in the NBA as a "dream come true," he was thrilled to be treated as a peer by players he had long admired.
The first outstanding achievement in Hill's career came midway through his first year with the Pistons. Only a rookie on a struggling team, he topped the voting for the All-Star Game--a feat that had never been duplicated, even by the likes of Jordan, Magic Johnson, or Larry Bird. "The vote was a clear and unmistakable scream from the basketball public that they want something better," wrote a columnist in the Washington Post. "They want someone with a wonderful game who doesn't have to beat his chest every time he dunks.... They want someone who realizes that humility and dignity are as manly as any characteristics a professional athlete can have." At season's end Hill was named co-Rookie of the Year, sharing honors with Jason Kidd of the Dallas Mavericks.
Work remained to be done, however. Even with Hill's award-winning performance, the Pistons managed only a 28-54 season in 1994-95. A new Detroit coach, Doug Collins, put extra pressure on Hill to be just what the pundits expected him to be--another Michael Jordan. Eventually coach and player came to a better understanding of one another. "Grant doesn't have the killer instinct in scoring that [Jordan] has," Collins told Sports Illustrated. "He can dominate a game more subtly, by getting the ball to open people, by rebounding and, with two dribbles, getting his team into the open floor the way Magic [Johnson] did as a rookie." Indeed, with the "Be Like Mike" campaign officially terminated, Hill led the Pistons to a 1996 playoff appearance.
The first year that Hill earned the most votes for an All-Star Game, Jordan was not an active player. In 1995-96, however, Jordan had returned with all of his considerable talents in tow. Nevertheless, the personable Hill once again topped the All-Star balloting, narrowly beating Jordan by approximately 17,000 votes. At the same time, the Kelloggs cereal company put an action shot of Hill--and a wealth of career information--on 4.5 million boxes of Frosted Mini-Wheats, one of the company's most popular cereals. In the summer of 1996 Hill brought his talents to a new venue: the Olympics. Perhaps the best known member of Dream Team III, he helped to keep America on a pinnacle as the nation with the best men's basketball team.
Fame and wealth regardless have done little to change Grant Hill. He does not smoke and has never touched alcohol. He once told the Boston Globe: "I live a very boring life. Eat. Sleep. Play basketball. Watch ESPN.... The only thing I know is Detroit Pistons basketball." As Mark Heisler noted in the Los Angeles Times, "An NBA, awash in post-adolescent monsters, finally has a prospect in the tradition of Magic Johnson, with an electrifying game and a head that isn't expanding to keep pace."
In the summer of 1999 Hill married Canadian-born jazz singer Tamia. The following year--soon after singing a $93 million contract with the Pistons-- he was traded to the Orlando Magic. An untimely broken ankle caused his to sit out much of his first season in Orlando, and he missed the 2000 Summer Olympics as well. Hill, according to his own admission, used the opportunity of recuperating from his injury to stand back and reassess his goals and accomplishments. "Boring" his life may be, but Hill would not change it. "It just seems like yesterday I was in high school, pretending I was Julius Erving and pretending I was Isiah Thomas and pretending I was Michael Jordan," he admitted in the Los Angeles Times. "Now in some way I'm kind of in their shoes, in the sense that people do the same with me--I guess. So I'm told. It's just hard to believe."
Awards
Henry Iba Award for nation's best collegiate defensive player, 1992; named Atlantic Coast Conference Player of the Year, 1994; member of NBA All-Star Team, 1995 and 1996 (led balloting on both occasions), named co-Rookie of the Year, 1995; member of Dream Team III, U.S. Olympics, 1996.
Further Reading
- Boston Globe, December 1, 1994, p. 79.
- Esquire, February 1995, p. 60.
- GQ, April 1995, p. 170.
- Los Angeles Times, January 5, 1995, p. C1.
- People, January 23, 1995, p. 74.
- Sports Illustrated, February 1, 1993, p. 58; January 22, 1996, p. 59.
- Time, February 13, 1995, p. 78.
- USA Today, December 6, 1994, p. C1; May 18, 1995, p. B5, C3; January 26, 1996, p. C1.
- USA Today Weekend, December 18, 1994, p. 4.
- Washington Post, February 12, 1995, p. D1.
— Mark Kram
